CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; Death Penalty Ignites a Musical Coalition

By ANN POWERS

Published: June 27, 2001

Michael Franti has questioned the death penalty for as long as he can remember. Drawn to both underground music and radicalism since his teens, Mr. Franti, whose band, Spearhead, plays tonight at the Wetlands Preserve, considers his opposition natural. He has organized events supporting Mumia Abu-Jamal, perhaps the most famous convict on death row in the United States, and for years has criticized the criminal justice system on panels and in interviews. But until ''Stay Human'' on Six Degrees Records, Spearhead's latest album, this pioneering alternative hip-hop artist had never visited death row in a song.

''I had really been wanting to write about the death penalty,'' Mr. Franti said in a recent interview. ''As I thought about it, I asked myself, How can I write about it in one song? It was too complex.''

Instead, Mr. Franti framed the funky music on ''Stay Human'' with a fictional radio broadcast telling of a community activist wrongly convicted and sent to death row. Though some critics have found Mr. Franti's melodramatic tale hard to swallow, it represents a new step in contemporary political music.

Artists looking for a cause today can choose from a laundry list including feminism, the environment, various international conflicts and freedom of expression. Since the 1980's, when the fight against AIDS led to projects like the highly successful ''Red Hot'' benefit album series, no central issue has emerged. ''Stay Human'' is a sign that the drive to abolish the death penalty may be a new catalyst.

''I feel like it's time for music to step out on the issue of the death penalty in the same way music stepped out on AIDS,'' Mr. Franti said. ''Some people feel it might hurt their fan base. But I think that as this movement grows, there will be more musicians involved.'' Testimonies on the ''Stay Human'' CD booklet from Bono, Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and others suggest he may be right.

Since 1995, when Tim Robbins persuaded stars like Bruce Springsteen and Steve Earle to contribute to an album inspired by his film ''Dead Man Walking,'' musicians have increasingly voiced their views on the death penalty and the related issues of prison reform and criminal justice. Veterans of social justice like Barbra Streisand, Emmylou Harris and Joan Baez count this as one of many crusades.

Beyond the celebrity circuit, though, the death-penalty issue is raising the potential for an unusual coalition. The underground cultures of roots-rock and hip-hop are alive with activity that could grow into an artist-driven movement.

Among the roots-rock musicians, who mix raw-country and blues, Steve Earle has done the most to promote interest in opposition to the death penalty. ''America is fighting a war on crime the same way we fought the war in Vietnam,'' the country star said recently. ''It's about body count, rather than any sort of tangible results.''

The singer-songwriter didn't mention Vietnam casually; like that war, he said, this cause raises strong emotions. He suspects that his political beliefs have cost him some record sales. But they have fed his art. Mr. Earle has written not only several songs about death row, but also a story about it in his new fiction collection, ''Doghouse Roses,'' published by Houghton Mifflin, and is working on a play about Karla Faye Tucker, the pickax murderer turned born-again Christian who was executed in Texas in 1998. He also stumps at rallies like this weekend's ''Starvin' For Justice'' sit-in on the Washington Mall, a five-day fast and vigil that features a performance he will give on Sunday.

Mr. Earle's influence extends throughout roots-rock, where real-life prison stories are showing up among the usual tales of heartbreak and the outlaw life. Similarly, in underground hip-hop, an amorphous romance with revolution is sharpening into a more focused social critique.

On compilation albums like ''No More Prisons'' for Raptivism Records and ''The Unbound Project Volume 1,'' issued by Ground Control/Nu Gruv, rappers address the war on drugs and describe the indignities of life behind bars. Incidents as different as the killing by the police of an unarmed African immigrant, Amadou Diallo (which also inspired a Bruce Springsteen song, ''American Skin''), and the impending murder trial of Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the former Black Panther known as H. Rap Brown, have inspired concerts and recordings. The involvement of mainstream hip-hop artists is still largely limited to their own legal run-ins, but among independent artists calls for reform have become de rigueur.

''Every generation of African-Americans has made a stride forward for civil rights, and we've yet to do that,'' said Adisa Banjoko, a public relations consultant who served as the music coordinator for a rally last March in San Francisco to benefit Mr. Jamal. ''We've got to put our flag in the earth.''

The attempt to make a mark is affecting public opinion, activists say. ''People have been afraid because it might appear to put them on the side of those who kill, and they could look insensitive to victims,'' said Lance Lindsay, executive director of the abolitionist group Death Penalty Focus, from his office in San Francisco. ''Now they see the artists they admire saying this is worthy of another look, and they begin questioning.''